Illuminated Sounds has been doing twisted things with children’s toys, and they’ve got a free sample library to prove it – James’ Circuit Bent Library:

Here is a Collection of samples from a few of my own circuit bent toys. I’ve made a quick couple of videos that will show you the method of how I captured these samples. I edited them in Protools at 16bit 441khz as mono WAV files. Feel free to comment or request any more. Enjoy.

See the Illuminated Sounds site for more video demos and the free download.

• ProToolerBlog has a large list of 27+ resources for free Kontakt sounds
• Rekkerd has over 35 sources for free Kontakt sounds

If you’ve got other suggestions, leave a comment below!

Here are the details:

Create your own samples, add them to an audio track in wav format and submit the track to this Soundcloud group Want To Be A Professional Sample Producer it’s that simple.

Even if you don’t enter the competition we welcome your comments on whose samples you think are great and thanks to Soundcloud’s amazing  interface, commenting couldn’t be any easier. For new Soundcloud users you will need an account to both submit your samples and comment on the entries. Registration and a personal account are 100% free.

Details below.

Competition Rules

• Producers must submit a minimum of 10 samples contained within one audio track and submit their entry to this sample competition group.
• Audio tracks must be in wav format.
• Samples can be in any style you wish, one shots, music loops, drum beats or even sound fx .
• Samples can be added to the audio track either in isolation, looped or as a musical track showcasing the samples.
• All genres are welcome from Tech House & Minimal through Drum & Bass and Breaks. If you can produce it we want to hear it!
• Producers may submit as many audio tracks as they wish.
• All samples submitted must be the producers original work and must not violate any common law or statutory right of any third party including, without limitation, contractual rights, copyrights and rights of privacy or publicity.

Here are the entries that have been submitted:

Tom at Waveformless has put together a free sample library of percussion noises created with a Sequential Circuits Pro One.

Here’s what he has to say about the samples:

It’s hard to believe another weekend is upon us, but it is, so here are some more free samples to get your weekend off to a good start.

This time, it’s a set of 21 24-bit synthetic percussion sounds I made on my Sequential Pro One (that’s it to the left).

Get the download link at Tom’s site and let me know what you think of the samples.

The Berlin Wall came down 20 years ago today – which is pretty amazing – or ancient history if you’re not a Gen X’er or older.

The fall of the Berlin Wall led to profound political changes, but also profound cultural changes, especially in the world of music.

Ueberschall – the samplemeisters of Germany – has put together a new sample library that tries to distill down the influential electronic sounds of the city – Sounds Of Berlin.

Description:

With the release Sounds of Berlin Ueberschall covers the different sub-genres of minimal sound — from 120 BPM Afterhour-House to 130 BPM Dancefloor-Techno — and is oriented around labels and themes such as “Kompakt”, “Mobilee”, “Vakant”, “Boxer” and “Cocoon”. The 1 GB content is built for professional club sound needs. 1258 Loops & Samples provide enough material to be invited to countless sessions and hours of inspiration and creativity.

Each of the 75 construction kits is broken down into its single lines, each kit offers bass loops, synth loops and drum and percussion loops which can be integrated easily into every live set, thanks to Elastik. For your own groove creation you can use the single drumsounds which provide the low-end treatment and high frequency sizzle for the right punch in every club. All material is preprogrammed and ready to roll out thanks to the bundled Elastik interface. Elastik has many features which complement the electro genre nicely: filters per note, hi quality transposition, granulation effects, volume settings per note and easy mixing with additional Elastik libraries.

Specs:

• 1 GB, 75 Construction Kits, 1258 Berlin Loops and Samples
• Elastik Soundbank for Mac/PC/AU/VST/RTAS/StandAlone
• Elastik Player included – no sampler required

Sounds of Berlin retails for 99 Euro.

See the Ueberschall site for audio demos.

Credits:

Asem Shama – There are just a few electronic artists that started 15 years ago and do still create new trends. Asem Shama is one of them. Since the early 90s he is one of the pioneers of Germany’s electronic music scene. Since his beginning the Berlin-based DJ released over 80 tracks on different labels and played in clubs from Brazil to Japan. Today he is producing artists such as Monika Kruse and Marc Miroir.

Ruede Hagelstein – The DJ and producer Ruede Hagelstein is resident-DJ of the Berlin “Watergate” club since 2006. He became a member of „Upon You” records with his first EP “Ghostdriver” in 2007. Since then his tunes are played by DJs such as Sven Väth or Michael Meyer and appeared on different compilations by “Cocoon” and other labels.

You know what else raises the hackles around here?

Sample libraries with porn movie names.

You know you’ve seen them.

Ghetto Grooves, for example, is a pretty descriptive title. You can figure you’re going to get some solid hip hop and r ‘n’ b loops, with a title like that.

By the time you get to Ghetto Grooves 3, though, you’re moving into porn movie title territory. You gotta figure that the sound developer has put things on autopilot.

Ghetto Grooves 3 sounds like something that you’re going to find in the back room at Guitar Center….through the 18 and over door.

Here are a few more titles for you to consider:

• Heat Seekers 2
• Nu Jointz II
• Big Booty Remix 2
• Ethno World 4
• V-Spot
• Bollywood Bangers
• Black Butta 2
• Backside Bounce 2
• Urban Jointz
• Funky House Grooves 2

Sample libraries or porn movies?

You make the call!

Description:

Experimental Box focuses on aspects of glitch, minmal and noise music and gives you a full toolbox of ingredients for cacophony, dissonance, atonality, noise, glitch, machines, hum, and repetition.

The rhythms, ambients and instruments of the Experimental Box were assembled from unique sounds such as stations-announcements, trains, paper crumpling, acoustic and electronic noise, station hum, underground-railway noise, pneumatic doors, crown cap shaking, glitches, noise, hiss, hum and other weirdness.

Check out the demos at the Cinematique site.

Contents:

• Brakes & Noises: Screaming brakes of an underground railway and noise ambience sent through a tape delay.
• Clashing Rails: Screaming rails and station ambience including an announcement gong. Modwheel switches between the two scenarios.
• Cuts Cap & Paper: A couple of tempo-synced loops: Crone-Cap shaking, Paper crumpling,  Tapping the strings of a guitar and Steps in leaves. You can control the filter, delay and reverb and a quarter note gate.
• Electro Wrong: An eighth note gated distorted alarm sound.
• Frog Angels: Kind of whistling/ kazoo sound mixed with electronic filtered noise. Modwheel changes between the two ambiences.
• Harmonize Arp: Lot hum through an arpeggiator with 6 presets.
• Lonesomescape: Different recordings of synthetic generated noise and sine oscillators. Low and deep!
• Noisescape: Different recordings of a busy lot and a sample of a station hum manipulated by filter and gates.
• Railway Slices: A couple of samples and recordings of trains and underground railways of cologne as well as station announcements in German and English.
• Reverse Garden: A combination of autoharp and psaltery fragments mixed up with a “bad” synthetic sound.
• Western Dirt: A dirty, dry muted E-guitar with 3 Round Robin variations, additional noise, scratch and attack recordings. It´s easy to edit the delay (amount, speed and feedback) and reverb (amount).
• ZW Expressive: A very expressive and percussive variation of our Zeitter & Winkelmann Piano.

Experimental Box retails for 19 EUR.

Note: Kontakt 3 or higher full version is required.

Eric Archer, an electronics designer and musician who builds unique electronic sound generators, has posted a collection of samples made using one of his latest projects, the Mini Space Rocker drum machines.

Here’s a preview:

See also our earlier posts on Eric Archer and his Mini Space Rocker drum machines.

This is a demo of Roland TB-303 Acid Sounds, a free collection of Roland TB-303 Bassline Synthesizer samples.

via LorDBassePL:

Acid Sounds from Roland TB-303 great for Hardcore/Rave/Hardstyle production.

The sound library was designed by Yvat, a Rumanian IDM-artis, to create a new world of soundscape sculptures.

About Yvat

Yvat embraced a double track career of sound designer & producer and of experimental music artist. Over the past 10 years, more than 25 albums have been released by well known labels of experimental electronica, like Cactus Island, SubliminalTapeClub, Envizagae, Experimental Seafood or Boltfish.

His geometrical constructions combine fortunately unpolished textures and fine crafted sounds to give you a fresh and yet rough approach on intelligent music.

Art of Sounds retails for 99 Euro. An audio demo is available at the Ueberschall site.

Description:

Activate the parallel atmospheric energy in your productions with Ueberschall’s new school tool “Art of Sounds”. This versatile ensemble of FX mechanism based grooves and loops was made for progressive and experimental sound chemistry.

From this original standout concept, you can construct edgy, texturally emphasized grooves for Tracks, Film Score, GameAudio and New Media. With “Art of Sounds” you will be able to shape material beyond conformity.

Art Of Sounds provides 69 construction kits between 60 and 136 BPM, separated into:

• Single lines
• Artificial ambiences
• IDM illustrations
• Unperfected loops
• Additional drum kits shots to generate your own loops with

The 1.06 GB variety of content includes warm pads which conflict within themselves, defused and torn. Combined with rhythms which seem to diminish into an airy mist, while at the same moment the melody carries them on. Creating an aesthetic symbiosis of rhythm and harmony that fuses deeply within the meaning of sound. Unpredictable, living FX design, turbulence and nanotone logic help deliver unparalleled immersion in use. From soft and calm to chaotic and disturbed you’ll find everything that you need for modern and sophisticated multimedia productions. The single part loops in “Art of Sounds” can offer more than their sum, considering the flexible workflow within the Elastik engine that allows you to suite the material to your needs.

Pettinhouse

Here’s a preview of WarmJazzFree:

Features:

• 7 Kontakt patches ready to use: 1 patch is dry for amp simulators and 6 patches are amped with the Kontakt effects processor emulating some of the popular guitarist sounds.
• 129 unique samples.
• 3 layers.
• Round robin played – upstroke/Downstroke.
• Release samples for each note.

You can download WarmJazzFree at the Pettinhouse site.

via rekkerd

Glass Works is the first SC product to be packaged in Native Instruments’ Kontakt Player, meaning that non-Kontakt owners can enjoy the enhanced scripting and control that Soniccouture instruments have become renowned for.

Glass Works is a sampled collection of 3 instruments which generate sound from glass.

These are :

• Le Cristal - A bizarre ’sound sculpture’ designed in 1952 by Bernard and François Baschet. It consists of about 4 octaves of chromatically tuned glass rods, which are rubbed with wet fingers. The vibration of the glass is passed to a heavy block of metal, which itself is tuned and in fact determines the final pitch. The entire mechanism is amplified by a large steel plate, called the “fiame”. There are also three small fiberglass cones that amplify the higher frequencies.
• The Glass Armonica – A musical instrument that uses a series of glass bowls or goblets graduated in size to produce musical tones by means of friction (instruments of this type are known as friction idiophones ). The instrument was invented by Benjamin Franklin, who called his invention the “armonica” after the Italian word for harmony. He worked with London glassblower Charles James to build one, and it had its world premiere in early 1762, played by Marianne Davies.
• Cloud Chamber Bowls – The Cloud Chamber Bowls are Soniccouture’s recreation of an instrument built in the 1960s by maverick American composer Harry Partch. It consists of hanging “bowls” which are sections of 12-gallon glass carboys. Both tops and bottoms of the carboys are used. Partch had 14 (later 13) bowls hanging from a large wooden frame he called a “tori”. The name “Cloud Chamber Bowls” arose from the fact that Partch found the original tops and bottoms at a Radiation Laboratory at UC Berkeley in 1950. The bowls were originally used for cloud chambers used in tracing paths of subatomic particles.

Glass Works is available now on DVD and Download, priced GBP 99 / USD 159.

Failed Muso has an interesting story about how sounds get sampled and shared, starting with a famous Korg M1 patch:

Remember that classic piano sound from 90’s house records? The ubiquitous Korg M1 Piano patch was the 90’s equivalent of the DX7’s EP patch or the Fairlight’s Orch5 stab.

A long time ago, a cohort on the KvR forum, a guy from Norwich by the name of Kriminal, sampled his M1 keyboard and made the piano patch available as a soundfont, I believe.

Being an avid Akai user, I asked him if I could convert to the Akai S5/6000 and Z Series formats, to which he agreed.

He goes on to explain how the samples ended up in EXS24 format, via Nick at SonicState.

Who knows where else the samples have landed…….

Download links at the Failed Muso site.

Image:The_WB

Korg M3 Classic Beatboxes is a new sample library from Kid Nepro.

The new sample kit contains sounds from the TR808, TR909, CR78, Linn Drum and Simmons Drum Kit.

via KidNepro:

A demo from our M3 Hit Factory sound collection featuring our “Classic Beatbox” Drum Kit.

Beats from the combi titled “Retro Beatboxes”. No multi tracking. Everything was played live into my DAW.

Interesting Note: I filmed everything with my right hand while playing the pads, switches and sliders with my left. Now try that sometime!

Music & Video – Steve Proto ©1984-2009 – Kid Nepro Productions

More info on all our M3 sounds at: www.kidnepro.com

Description:

Circuit Bent Sounds volume 2 includes a huge range of circuit bent samples suitable for Minimal, Tech, Electro, Techno, Industrial and Drum and Bass music producers worldwide.

Drum machines, synths and childrens toys have been assaulted, violated and pushed to the absolute limit, to create a collection of sounds completely unobtainable in any other way.

Circuit Bent Sounds volume 2 was created in conjunction with Paul Norris of Circuitbenders.co.uk – a devoted expert at the art of circuit bending, and a signed recording artist in his own right. Recycling noise since 2001.

Circuit Bent Sounds 2 retails £19.95 GBP.

Features:

• 777 Circuit Bent Samples.
• 303 Loops.
• 474 Circuit Bent Sounds.
• 25 Ready to play patched for Reason NNXt, Kontakt, Halion, EXS, SFZ and Kontakt Soft Samplers.
• Apple Loops version available.
• Acidised Wav and Rex2 (Main Zip).
• Machines used: Alesis SR16, Frontline percussion synth, Korg DDD5 and MR16, the classic Mattel Synsonics, Roland TR727 and the Yamaha DD6. The Circuit Bent Keys and Synths include the Casio SA1, SK60 & SK200 samplers, Fraktal Noise Synth, Korg Poly 800, Purple Keys and the Yamaha VSS200. The Toys used include the analogue Beats Toy, ELC, Matchbox Talking Teacher, Mighty Borg Teddy Bear, Texas Instruments and VTech Talking Computer and many others.

The Yamaha Electone D-85 is the source of sounds in the fourth volume of the Vintage Keyboard Collection.

Description:

The D-85 was released in 1980 and designed as an home organ a grandmas organ, for the “loaded” grandmas though, cause the price tag was around $10000. The D-85 is completely analog and uses a technique called PASS (Pulse Analog Synthesis System) developed for the legendary Electone GX-1. The sound of the D-85 is rich warm big and very much analog synth and not typical organ.

The Gothic choir sounds of the D-85 is superb and “Kraftwerk” type of sounding. The strings and pads are so rich and warm, you gonna love them!

The built in drum machine has a clearer, more thin sound than, for example, the Ace Tone/Roland and the programing are a bit more progressive and odd. All grooves has been sampled in low tempo and with different mixes so you have hihats, cymbals separated from kick snare etc.

All grooves and fills comes in both A, B and Mixed versions.

The D-85 SampleSet contains 511 24bit mono WAV samples of the instruments and 208 24bit mono WAV grooves. 208 Rx2 files for use in any Rx2 compatible software like Stylus RMX, Reason, Cubase etc. 52 programs for Logic EXS24 67 programs for HALion 1.1 and all versions above 71 programs for NI Kontakt 1 and all versions above 28 programs for SoundFont (16bit) compatible with all samplers supporting the Sf2 format like the free SFZ, Cakewalk Dimension Pro, Reason NN-XT and more. All formats are included when you buy the SampleSet.

Motion Samples presents the sounds of Galactic Atmosphere featuring 36 scores of synthesizer strings and pads created for film scoring projects in the themes of space, mystery, psychedelic, science, technology, electronic and other enigmatic themes.

The scores are arranged by tempo from 60-100 bpm and duration times from 40 sec to 2 min, providing a wide selection of ideas to fit you scene.

This collection is also great for creating electronic and world music.

Contents:

• 36 Wav Files, 40 sec – 2 min
• 60-100 bpm
• License C (TV/Film), details here

Galactic Atmosphere retails for $35 USD.

Features:

• Ambient A (Sampled guitars transformed to a calm ambient pad, modwheel controls sound).
• Ambient T (Deep evolving texture).
• Gentle (Sinus sounds formed to a chary and careful background).
• Insidious (Rude and nasty sound, controlling delay amount and feedback).
• Maryn (Simple and effective short sound).
• Maryn Arp-MW (”Maryn” with arppegiator, 12 available presets controlled by modwheel).
• Meseno 1 (Short ambient sound, generated by the KORG MS20 ).
• MS20 Rhythm Bank (39 looped beats created with sounds of the “MS20 Rhythm BSH”-instrument, 1- or 2-bars, tempo-synced, controlling LP/HP-Filter, Delay and Reverb, each with free-assignable controller).
• MS20 Rhythm BSH (Bass-Drums, Snares and HiHat, exclusively generated with the legendary MS20 – like the old drum machines worked, separate volume controller for BD, SN + HH and amount of distortion).
• MS20 Perc Bank (43 looped percussive and tonal beats of the “MS20 Rhythm Perc”-instrument, 1- or 2-bars, tempo-synced, controlling LP/HP-Filter, Delay and Reverb, each with free-assignable controller).
• MS20 Rhythm Perc (A bunch of noises, blups, slices and percussion sounds, exclusively generated with the legendary MS20).
• MS20 Sin Bass (A classical pure sinus bass, very low).
• Outta Space (Reminds of a theremin, moving the modwheel adds a real tape-echo-machine atmosphere to it).
• Tranquilizer (Beautiful mystic pad, made out of several feedbacks, whistling sounds and some human tones, modwheel controls sound).

Downbeat Box retails for 19 EUR.

Downbeat Box

Downbeat encompasses a wide variety of music-styles. But it´s much wider than those terms of “laid-back electronic music” alone would indicate. DOWNBEAT BOX is a fresh and exciting exploration into this world – highly playable, this essential selection will be a wonderful resource for use in a broad range of music styles such as electronic, pop and score music productions.

DOWNBEAT BOX is fed from many organic as well as synthetic sources. Beautifully sampled from such diverse sources as voices, whistling noises, feedbacks, guitars and sounds and slices of the subtractive synthesized legendary KORG MS20, the package contains a mishmash of pads & textures, beats, rhythms, percussions, add-ons and solo-sounds. Check out all the opportunities the instruments provide by using the modwheel or the programmed surface of Kontakt.

Soniccouture has introduced The Skiddaw Stones, a new virtual instrument that lets you make rock music from sampled ancient rocks:

The Skiddaw Stones are probably the most unusual and certainly the oldest instrument that Soniccouture has sampled.

A Lithophone ( litho = stone, phone= voice ) dating from 1840, The Skiddaw Stones are composed of 61 tuned and shaped rocks, made from the rare hornfels stone, found in Cumbria, England. Hornfels is said to have a superior tone and longer ring than the more commonly used slate.
The Worlds First Rock Band

Created by Joseph Richardson, a stonemason and musician, it took almost thirteen years to collect and shape enough individual notes of hornfels to make an eight-octave range. The massive task of assembling this instrument consumed Joseph so absolutely that he and his family were reduced to poverty. Once complete, Richardson and his sons toured Europe as The Rock, Bell and Steel Band, and even performed at Buckingham Palace, by command of Queen Victoria.

See the Soniccouture site for audio demos – the Skiddaw Stones do sound awesome and unique.

Features:

• 2.5 GB Library – Kontakt Live! EXS24
• 24 bit 44.1 Khz Stereo
• 12 Velocity layers
• Wood + Rubber mallets
• 5 Round Robin layers
• KSP Jammer Script

Price: $79

Specifications:

• 138 Waveforms
• 700 electronic drum and percussion sounds
• 40 Drum Racks
• 150 Drum Clips
• Compatible with Ableton Live 7 and Live 8 (including LE versions)
• Download size 135 mb

WDK is available now for €29.

Details below.

Description:

WDK was created from the ground up to work with Ableton Live. Transient, synthetic timbres were forged into the WDK sound set, creating a library suitable for a wide range of electronic music styles.

WDK takes advantage of the sound engine from Sampler – Ableton’s advanced sampling instrument. A carefully designed waveform is the foundation for each drum sound in the WDK sound library. As each waveform is played back as an oscillator within Sampler, further sculpting of the tone is achieved through Sampler’s sound design functions and Ableton’s powerful built-in effects.

The result? A staggering 700 drum and percussion sounds crafted into unique and expressive Instrument Racks. MESA+ sound designers gave special attention to developing Instrument Racks with the capability of producing new and different timbres that vary greatly from the original sound.

Macro knobs in each Instrument Rack allow WDK users to quickly customize the drum sound to their own tastes. The Instrument Racks in the WDK library have been constructed into 40 distinct Drum Racks, each rack loaded with 22 pads. The grouping arrangement of the Drum Rack pads is consistent, allowing for compatibility with the 150 MIDI clips included in the WDK library.